


Something To Talk About

by marythefan (marylex)



Category: NSYNC, Popslash
Genre: Canon Queer Character, Coming Out, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-24
Updated: 2006-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-06 18:46:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marylex/pseuds/marythefan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lance comes out. Chris is appropriately surprised. Because of course, they weren't talking about it.</p><p>Written for Synchronik for Don We Now Our Gay Apparel 2006.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something To Talk About

Chris's reflexive reaction is, of course, to call Justin. Lance is barely out of the door of the hotel room before Chris stabs at the number on his speed dial - Justin hasn't been gone that long, headed to the airport for his flight back to L.A. He can't be on the plane yet.

"Dude. How long has Lance been _gay_?" Chris asks as soon as he hears Justin's voice, tinny through the cellphone.

"Dude. OW. Quit shriekin' in my ear," Justin says, and Chris can picture him pulling the phone away to scowl at it, as if Chris could see his expression through the satellite linkup and be cowed by it. "And what d'you mean?"

"I mean, how ... long ... has Lance ... been gay?" Chris says, enunciating precisely, so the slow children can keep up. He'd feel more smug about that if not for the sneaking, growing suspicion that _he's_ been one of the slow children - and for a while, now.

"Um ..." Justin pauses as if he's actually thinking. "At least since we met him?" The response is careful, only a slight hint of condescension creeping into his tone. "I mean, you have met him, right?"

"Oh, don't tell me you could tell, Mr. Oblivious," Chris says.

"I didn't ... what?" Justin sounds confused now. "Seriously, man? You didn't know?"

"What? No! I didn't know. No one ever _said_ anything ..."

"Of course no one ever _said_ anything," Justin says.

"Well, why not?" Chris sounds a little shrill, even to himself.

"Dude, only dogs can hear you now."

"You're telling me that everyone's known all this time, and no one said anything to me about it?" When the hell did Chris become the hall monitor, the one everyone hid stuff from? Who is he, for fuck's sake - Kevin Richardson?

"Well, you're the one who said, remember?" There's a rustling noise and the hollow sound of Justin's palm cupped over the phone; Chris can still hear a murmur of his voice, low, polite, negative. "Hold on a minute," he says, returning to Chris, and there's more rustling, the sound of a door closing and a bolt sliding into place.

"Did you just lock yourself in an airport bathroom?" Chris asks.

"Freak. You're the one who said we don't talk about it. About whether or not anyone's gay."

"What?"

"In that one interview," Justin says in an overly patient tone, and Chris has to rummage around in the mental long grass, because Jesus. How many interviews have they all done at this point in their lives, and he's supposed to remember _one_?

"That interview with OUT?" he finally asks and pulls the phone away from his ear to stare at it, as if Justin could see his dumbfounded expression through the satellite hookup. "I thought we were 'not talking' about JC's experimental phase! And my thing that one time."

"And Lance," Justin says.

"But ... I ..." Chris flails mentally, verbally, physically, almost dropping the phone as he waves his hands in the air in an instinctive search for balance. "I thought we weren't talking about Lance because there was nothing to talk about! I mean, if it was going to be anyone, I thought it would be ... well, _you_."

"You think I wouldn't tell you something like that, man?" There's the slightest hint of hurt edging Justin's voice.

"I would've thought _Lance_ would have told me, too."

"How could he tell you when we weren't talking about it?" Justin asks in all earnestness, and Chris takes a minute to bang the cellphone against the mattress in frustration.

"Who's on first?" he asks dryly, once the fit has passed.

"That's what I want to find out," Justin says, and Chris can tell just from the timbre of his voice that he's grinning now. "You gonna be the coach, too?"

"Not while I'm stuck on third with I Don't Know," Chris says, and Justin laughs. "OK, so, if none of us were ever talking about it, how do you know?"

"He told me," Justin says.

"No, he didn't."

"Yes, he did."

"No, he didn't."

"Yes. He did."

"Did not."

"Did, too."

"Did _not_." Chris is grinning by this time.

"Dude. Just ... Will you quit bein' 5 years old? And he did so tell me."

Not for the first time in the past ten minutes, Chris regrets having this conversation over the phone, because what Justin really needs right now is to be tackled and noogied into submission. Unfortunately, the verbal takedown will have to suffice.

"Well then, _he_ doesn't know about that," he tells Justin. "_He_ said he hadn't talked to any of the guys but Joey about it."

He makes a little "rah-rah" gesture at himself in the mirror - _take that! the winnah and still champeen ..._ \- that ultimately has him ducking and scrabbling around in the pile of comforter where the cellphone lands when it slides its way from between his shoulder and his ear, down his chest to the hotel room floor. He can already hear Justin squawking before he brings it back to his ear.

"That's ... what? But ... he _said_," Justin says, and Chris flashes on a random memory, the sound of Lance and Justin murmuring together, curled lanky on a narrow bed in a German hotel room, Justin's voice reedy and Lance's rumbling as he tried to be quiet. Their foreheads had been almost touching as they shared a pillow, and Lance had slung one arm around Justin's hip to create an enclosed place, a private space, and Chris remembers Lance's thumb tucked comfortably into the waistband of Justin's worn flannel pajama pants.

He doesn't know what kind of confidences the two might have shared in those odd, intimate moments they sometimes had, but the memory of Lance's shaking hands and shaking voice as he talked about protecting NSYNC, about protecting Justin, is still crystal-sharp in Chris's mind, and and he knows that whatever Lance might have told Justin, it wasn't this.

"Kid," he says, gentling his tone, "I don't know what he said that makes you so sure, but whatever it was, he doesn't seem to think he's told you."

"I mean, he never used the word, but ... he was talking about ... accepting yourself for who you are, and coming to terms with it, and ..." Justin trails off momentarily. "But if he thinks I don't know, who does he think I was _talking_ about?"

"What _are_ you talking about? When, J?"

"In that interview with The Advocate," Justin says, sounding about as young as he never was when Chris first met him. "It was supposed to let him know that it was OK if, you know, he wanted to talk about it. To me. Some more."

"Wait, that gay friend you met when you were 14 - that was _Lance_ you outed?"

"It was supposed to let him know that everything was cool!"

"So you _outed_ him in a national gay magazine?"

"It wasn't supposed to _out_ him. I mean, it's not like I used his name. And it couldn't have been too obvious who it was. _You_ didn't figure it out."

"Yeah, but I'm figuring out that I've been pretty stupid this whole time." Chris slowly slides down to sit on the floor at the foot of the bed, wincing at the pain that spikes through his left knee.

"Who did you think I was talking about, anyway? How many gay friends do you think I had when I was 14?"

"Kid, you were in show business. You were a Mouse, for God's sake."

"I ... don't think that's very nice, the way you're sayin' that."

"He didn't tell _anybody_," Chris says, pushing his free hand up under his bandanna and through his hair, dropping his head back against the mattress. It's suddenly an effort to keep his voice steady. "Because we weren't talking about it. Jesus."

Chris remembers this feeling of helplessness, although he's only ever related it to hollowness in his own stomach and 11-year-old hands roughened by farm work and edged with paper cuts from the brown bags at the grocery store that paid him under the table because he was too young to be on the books. And in solving that problem, he'd managed to create a whole new one, the same fame and fortune that freed his family creating a cage for Lance. He laughs, short and sharp and ugly.

"So this whole time, he's ..." Justin stops.

"Yeah."

"But he can't ... he had to _know_ that it wouldn't matter, that we wouldn't ..." Justin sounds frantic now. "I mean, he didn't think we'd ... not accept it, right?"

"Sure. Maybe. What the fuck do I know?" Chris finds himself wanting to crawl back in bed and pull the comforter over himself and maybe come back out in about a month. Too bad checkout's in just a couple of hours.

"How did you find out, anyway? Oh my God, Chris, did you sleep with him?"

"What? _No_. But what the fuck, J, anyway? Do you have to sound so horrified at the idea? A guy could get a complex. Why wouldn't I sleep with Lance? Seriously, have you seen his ass?" Chris can tell what he's doing, falling back into the familiar patterns of banter, and he feels like a coward, because it's true: The last thing he wants to do is think about what a failure he seems to have been all this time.

"So how'd you find out?" Justin asks again, and Chris heaves a sigh.

"He told me."

"Chris, damn it ..."

"He did, J. I asked him why he hadn't brought his boyfriend along to Challenge this year, and I was ... I was _joking_, because of the way Jesse always used to be pasted to his ass, I mean it's not like JC hasn't had David fucking Gallagher trailing _him_ everywhere the past three days, you know ..."

"Oh, Chris." Justin's tone is reproachful.

"I didn't _know_. Nobody ever _said_ anything. And he sort of laughed, but he looked ... kind of scared in that resolutely not-scared way that he has, you know? And he asked if I had some time before I was leaving Chicago that he could talk to me and then he came by this morning and said that since I'd _asked_, he figured he should go ahead and tell me, and that he and Jesse had broken up, that it was all the attention, and oh my God, I broke the rules didn't I? I talked about it. That's why he told me."

"Chris? Breathe, man."

"Christ. What a mess."

"But you know now, right? I mean, officially? And you said he told Joey, right?"

"Well, sort of. Apparently, Joey kind of ... walked in on him. With Freddy."

"You asshole, I didn't need that kind of information."

"That's what you get for _talking_ about it."

"But ... wait. I'm not supposed to know, right? ... Chris, if he thinks he hasn't told me, are you supposed to be telling me any of this?"

"Um."

"Oh, great. Then can you _please_ not mention this to JC? Because he'd kick my ass for talking about it."

When Chris shows up on Lance's doorstep two months later, it has nothing to do with Lance's confession ... admission ... revelation. (_There's nothing to confess_, he tells himself sternly in the mirror. _It's not a crime. Well, not everywhere._) Chris shows up on Lance's doorstep because he's tired of Orlando and tired of his new bandmates and tired of himself and tired of women - both those he's related to and those he's not - and L.A. is as far away as he can get without getting on a boat.

Everywhere else in the country, autumn's probably moving in, but it's still hot across the South and the Southwest, and Las Cruces to Los Angeles is the shortest leg of a three-day trip, but it's still a long fucking way. When Chris finally checks into his posh Hollywood hotel, he only takes time for a shower and to make a pitiful post to his MySpace account chronicling his aimless Hollywood presence before he crashes into bed for a three-hour nap. When he wakes up, disoriented in the grey twilight, there are three messages on his cellphone voicemail: A meandering one from JC about the weather and some kind of new wine and chickens and his _pants_, for God's sake, that Chris thinks means they're supposed to do dinner at some point. And two from Lance, the first asking where he is, in L.A., and the other saying never mind that, why aren't you _here_, dumbass?

It's the "dumbass" that makes Chris feel all warm and fuzzy inside, he admits when Lance opens his front door and Chris drops his duffel in the foyer. It held so much promise, Chris didn't even stop for a drink in the hotel bar before checking back out.

Lance feeds him - Lance always feeds people, it's his latent Southern mama gene - and gives him a bottle of some kind of insanely expensive imported beer and sprawls across the island in the center of the kitchen. He talks about his latest charity project, for Katrina victims, and listens to Chris' tales of woe, domestic and otherwise.

"I'm ruining Taylor's emo-goth cred at school," Chris says, rolling his eyes and shoveling in more potato salad. "That school she can afford to go to because her older brother is a dancey Be-Dazzled pop bandboy."

"You should put together a rock'n'roll band," Lance says, grinning. "Wear more eyeliner, or somethin'."

"Yeah. Maybe I'll look into that," Chris says and details the latest movement of Little Red Monsters diffidently, almost embarrassed - it's like talking about your new girlfriend to your ex.

Lance asks about Bev and the other girls, and Chris tells him about Briahna's first day of pre-school, accompanied by Papa Joe and Mama Phyllis - Lance has already heard the story from Joey, but he seems perfectly content to hear it again. He looks down at his hands, fingers twisting together, when Chris asks him about his niece.

"She's gettin' so big - I got some pictures the other day from my sister and Ford," he says to the kitchen island before sneaking a peek up at Chris under those preternaturally arched brows. Pretty - but then Lance was always pretty, once they got him a decent haircut and he grew into those cheekbones. Still pretty even when he grew up and got handsome, Chris thinks. Not that it's something he's ever let himself dwell on, not with his oblivious belief in Lance's mythical straightness.

"Been awhile since you've seen your family in person?" Chris asks.

"I was thinking ... I might go home for Christmas this year. I haven't been in a while. It'd be nice to see everyone again. I'm ... not seeing anyone right now, so it wouldn't be ... awkward."

When Chris gets up and lays a hand over Lance's, he can feel that fine tremor he noticed two months ago in his hotel room, and he's afraid it could end up shaking Lance apart.

"Have you told any of them?" he asks, and Lance shakes his head, looking sick.

"I can't, Chris. It would ... I can't."

"Come here, kid," Chris says and finds himself with an armful of Lance, and he's unprepared for this. JC or Joey or one of the moms always handled breakdowns - no one who's met Chris has ever believed he should be put in charge of anyone emotionally fragile, and consequently, he's never had much practice at it. He means well, but he suspects he's more of a punch-you-in-the-shoulder-buy-you-a-beer type of guy. "They're not going to thank you for keeping it from them," he says, low, in Lance's ear, and he can feel Lance's hands fist in the back of his shirt.

"I'm sorry," Lance says.

"Hey, no, it's OK. You're gonna be fine," Chris says, swamped again by that feeling of helplessness as he hears Lance's breath hitch, feels his shoulder blades jerk under Chris' palms. "Everything's going to be OK." He turns his head to press a quick kiss behind Lance's ear.

When Lance lets go, dragging his sleeve across his eyes, Chris goes in the bathroom and sits on the edge of the tub, head in hands, until he can pull himself together. He resists the urge to call Joey and yell at him because what good would that do? He resists the urge to call Diane Bass because he doesn't have the right. He calls himself a coward for thinking that if he wasn't going to be able to talk about it, it was easier to not know in the first place.

They're watching _Sin City_ in the dark on Lance's huge TV, and Chris can feel Lance's gaze on him like a weight, but when he turns his head, Lance is looking at the screen again.

"I don't really have anybody out here to talk to about it," Lance says, looking steadily ahead. "I mean, I guess a lot of people sort of know, JC and Justin and all, but nobody _knows_, you know?"

"Yeah," Chris says awkwardly and pats Lance's hand in the dark.

He wakes up in the middle of the night and lies in the guest room, the sound of his own breathing driving him a little bit nuts. He's finally reaching the point where he doesn't need to hear someone else in the room at night - and that's a relief, because it led to a couple too many women and at least one sleek, long-limbed boy he would have been better off without - but it's always kind of weird to him. He spent too many years timing his breath to too many other people's to be entirely comfortable with only the sound of his own soft exhalations. He pats the comforting weight of the dog that's been lying on his feet and winces as he swings his legs around to lever himself out of bed. He's not thirsty and he doesn't have to piss, he just can't seem to sleep, and he shuffles aimlessly down the hall to peek into Lance's room, where all the shades and curtains are, predictably, drawn. Chris can remember the fights they used to have in a long-ago Orlando house, sharing a bedroom where Chris liked to fall asleep to the sound of the television while Lance tossed and turned and huffed loudly to express his teenaged displeasure at his ongoing wakefulness.

Chris stands for a minute, forehead against the edge of the door, imagining he can see the rise and fall that marks Lance's breath outlined under white sheets. The characteristic breathy little half-snore Lance used to have is gone, and Chris wonders absently if it was the nose job that took care of it.

He's getting cold and considering going back to his own bed when Lance stirs and Chris' own breath catches at Lance's words.

"Chris?" He rumbles, low, the sound coiling in Chris's chest. "Chris? Come to bed."

_He didn't just say that_, Chris thinks. _He said GO to bed. He must have._ It doesn't stop him from stepping into the room before he can think better of it.

"Lance? Are you awake?"

"Chris?" Lance pushes himself up on his elbows suddenly, rubbing at his eyes with one hand. "What is it?"

"Nothing. I just ... I thought I heard something from one of the dogs. And then when I looked in, you were saying something, in your sleep."

"What was it?"

"Nothing. I don't know. I couldn't tell." Chris takes another couple of steps that bring him to the side of the bed and pushes his fingers through the rumpled mess of Lance's hair. He can't resist tracing the curve of Lance's cheek in the dark, stubble rough against his fingertips, and his stomach hollows out when Lance tilts his face sleepily into the touch. "Go back to sleep." He resists the urge to lean down and kiss Lance's forehead.

"Mmm. Y'okay?" Lance mumbles sleepily into his pillow.

"I'm fine. Go back to sleep." Chris gives him a last pat and moves away to sit in the rocking chair in one corner of the room. He remembers his mother holding the girls, crooning and rocking in a chair they had when Chris was small, and the feel of its broken cane sticking into his back as he carefully held Taylor, entrusted with her care on the weekends his mother worked. He rubs absently at the doggy muzzle that snuffles into his hand and watches Lance breathe.

Chris ends up staying in L.A. for almost a month - he and Lance are both booked on some TV show about pets at the end of September, and he's got no real desire to make two more cross-country drives in a matter of weeks, even when Lance flies back East for someone's birthday.

"That's dumb, man," he says when Chris makes noise about packing up his bag and heading back to a hotel. 'Why don't you just stay here?"

He calls Chris backstage from a Stones concert in New York and has Keith say hi. JC's in New York, too, for Fashion Week, so Chris spends a lot of time with the dogs and plays golf with Justin for two days in the middle of it all, after Justin gets back from a trip home to Memphis and before he has to be in Toronto for some pickups for another of his movies that will never get released where anyone can see it.

Chris is cooking grilled cheese sandwiches when he hears Lance come in and drop his luggage in the kitchen doorway.

"Hi, honey," Lance says. "I'm home."

"Bass, what the hell is wrong with you?" Chris asks in greeting. "I had to go to the grocery store to get some plain white bread. What kind of Southern boy doesn't have any damn Wonder bread in the house? How the hell do you make pimiento cheese sandwiches on that multigrain crap?"

"That's not pimiento cheese," Lance says, nodding at the frying pan.

"Of course not. Because pimiento cheese is _disgusting_. But far be it from me to malign the food of your people."

"Wouldn't that be peanut butter and banana?" Lance mumbles around a mouthful of the sandwich Chris has put in front of him. He sucks in air and makes a face. "Ow. Hot."

"Yes, it's melted cheese. And don't tell me you can make peanut butter and banana on multigrain, either."

" 'S good," Lance protests, but he has the decency to look slightly shamefaced.

"You say," Chris says, digging in the fridge for more cheese. "Hey, are you staring at my ass, Bass? No, you can admit it. It's a pretty great ass. I've seen it in the mirror."

"Shut up."

"No, really, it's fine. You looking, I mean. Well, my ass, too. Don't you think?" Chris turns in a circle, looking back over his shoulder; he's feeling slightly more manic than usual after almost a week with only the dogs as an audience. Lance throws a crust of bread at him.

"You're pink," he says, reaching up to press a finger to Chris's cheek as Chris returns to the island in the center of the kitchen. His hand is warm and lingers on Chris face.

"Your pool is pretty fab," Chris says, resolutely not looking away, even as his stomach does an uncharacteristic flip-flop. What the hell?

"What, you don't have sun in Orlando? What have you been doing that you don't get outside?"

"Living the life of a rock-and-roll star, with its late nights and its seedy clubs and its windowless studios. Not all of us have time for the tanning bed. Hey, did you just get butter all over my face, man?"

"You're fine," Lance says, and Chris holds still, cheek tilted, as Lane swipes at the spot with his thumb.

"I know I'm fine," he says, returning to the frying pan. "And I remember when you were all pale and pink, too, not some kind of bronzed sun god."

The silence stretches, and he looks over to see Lance staring down at the remains of his sandwich, frowning slightly and chewing on his lower lip.

"Hey. What?" Chris says, tapping on the counter with his spatula for attention, hoping that whole "sun god" thing wasn't too effusive. Or girly. Or obvious. Not that Lance could possibly miss the fact that he's hot.

"Nothin'. I just ... don't like thinking about that, you know. How I used to look. I look at pictures and I look all ... scared and stuff. I don't want to be that guy. I've kind of been working to not be that guy anymore."

"OKaaay," Chris says, wishing they'd stuck with simple embarrassment over "sun god." "You know whoever you are is fine, right?"

Lance nods, still looking at his plate, flushed under his expensive tan. Chris isn't sure he really does know it, not yet.

"Hey," Chris says. "It really is, you know."

However nerve-wracking it may be, emotional turmoil clearly is good for Chris's creativity: He and the band finish up three more songs and book nights in Hollywood and Anaheim in the weeks after he returns to Orlando. This must be why so many artists are willing to suffer, he thinks.

The gigs are right before Christmas and, typically, everyone's leaving California to visit families for the holidays right at the time Chris heads west. It doesn't stop Lance and Joey from showing up the first night, leaving Chris amused that Lance has to come back home to see him.

"We have these marvelous contraptions called airplanes, they make it pretty easy to get back and forth for most of us," Lance says after he and Joey push their way backstage, and Chris shudders.

"So you're here for Christmas, then? You're not going to head back and spend it on the road, are you?" Joey asks, handing Chris the towel he's reaching for, an echo of long-gone dressing room choreography perfected in drafty German auditoriums. Lance already has the cap twisted off a bottle of water and holds it out as Chris slings the towel around his neck.

"You're not going to spend it _alone_, are you?" Lance asks, and Chris makes a violent negative gesture, sputtering as he pulls away the water bottle and hastily reassures them that no, Lynn and Paul are out this way with Justin for the holidays, and he's sure there will be plenty of turkey and holly and presents for him there, yes, he'll be just fine. He's not going to be the excuse Lance uses to avoid Mississippi this Christmas.

"You're going back home, to spend more time with your mama," he tells Lance, who ducks his head and looks over at Joey. Joey nods at him.

"I think ... uh." He looks around and lowers his voice, automatically drawing them all into a tight circle that makes Chris feel like some kind of conspirator. "I think I'm going to try telling my sister, while I'm home." He looks terrified at the mere prospect, and Chris grabs him, looking over his shoulder at Joey who shrugs and raises his eyebrows and points to Lance as if to say it was all his idea.

"That's great, man, that's just great," Chris babbles, enveloping Lance and thumping him enthusiastically on the back. "Everything's going to be just fine, you'll see!" He pauses as Lance's arms tighten around him. Chris can feel him shaking, remembers months ago in a Chicago hotel room, and he tightens his own grip, holding Lance close, steady, sliding one hand up to cup the nape of Lance's neck, thumb rubbing at the short, soft hair behind his ear. "You're gonna be all right, baby," he whispers.

"Big daddy rock star," Lance says, and Chris can feel Lance smile against his neck, although the kid sniffs suspiciously when they let go of each other.

"So, come on," Joey says, hooking an arm around Lance's neck and pulling him toward the bar. "I guess the first round is on me."

Lance presses a key into Chris's hand before he and Joey rush out to catch their flight the next morning and Chris is left barefoot and hungover in Lance's kitchen, looking bemusedly around at all of Lance's holiday cheer.

It's three days after Christmas and he's in a hotel room in Beaumont on the way back to Orlando when he finally gets a call and the story, secondhand, from Joey. He throws his cellphone against the wall after he hangs up. Stacey just had to _cry_, didn't she?

The phone miraculously still works when he picks it up off the floor, and he leaves two voicemail messages and a text telling Lance to call him by the time he turns in for the night, setting the phone on the nightstand by his head so he won't miss it. Turning the ringer up all the way was probably a bad idea, he thinks, as he peels himself off the ceiling at 3:10 a.m.

"This is that boyband grapevine I've heard about, isn't it?" Lance's voice is just that much slower, the vowels that much longer and the consonants that much lazier, so that Chris can't figure out if he's drunk or just under the grammatical influence of Clinton, Mississippi.

"Joey called, yes," Chris says primly.

"I'm sorry," Lance says. "It's been ... kind of hectic. I hid in the bathroom to call Joe."

"Are you all right?"

"I really don't want to do this again. Ever."

"Yeah, I bet." Chris sighs, a long exhalation. "I'm sorry, kid."

"I made my sister cry, Chris."

"You didn't _make_ her cry, Lance. She did that all on her own."

"She's worried about our parents."

"Yeah, well. I'm worried about _you_." Chris leans forward in bed a little in his intensity.

There's a silence on the other end of the line.

"Lance? Are you still there?"

"Yeah, I'm here."

"Do I need to head back to L.A.?"

"I ... no. I'm fine. Really. You should have seen Ford, Chris, he was all, 'Yeah, and?' when Stacey told him, like it didn't even matter." Lance sounds brighter now, but then, he's always had kind of a hero-worship thing going on with his brother-in-law.

"Are you sure you're OK?"

"I'm _fine_, Chris."

"I know you are. I keep telling you that. Fine as fine can be."

"Quit it," Lance says, but he sounds like he's holding back a laugh. "I'll call you when I get back to L.A., all right?" His voice is low and warm.

"You're not hiding in the bathroom again, are you?"

"It's three a.m. - I think I can get away with callin' you from my own room without interruption."

"You're calling me from your room?'

"Yeah?" Lance sounds puzzled.

"Your bedroom."

"Yes."

"Are you in bed?"

"Um. Yeah, Chris. It's three a.m."

"What are you wearing?"

Lance laughs, that slow lazy laugh that tells Chris he _is_ drunk, and hangs up on him.

The New Year brings another new song and a new lineup and a new name for the band and a call from Sundance, and Chris almost drops the phone when Lance starts making low, breathy, moaning noises as soon as Chris flips it open.

"What are _you_ wearin'?" Lance asks, and it's only the sound of Justin giggling in the background that keeps Chris from swallowing his own tongue.

"Fucker!" he says. "Have you finally told him?"

"No," Lance says. "Not yet."

"So I guess actually having phone sex is out of the question."

"Probably," Lance says, laughing.

"I'm only lucky I got this prank call and not the one asking me if I've got Prince Albert in a can."

"Well, luck might have had a little something to do with it, but my evil machinations didn't hurt. It never hurts to know people in the right places, Chris."

"Cock-tease."

"I'm only a tease if what I do gets you hot," Lance says, his voice dropping back into the porn register, and Chris can hear Justin howling.

"You're so dead, Bass." _Timberlake, too_, Chris thinks. For oh, so many reasons.

"I love you too, Chris. By the way, Joey's got Prince Albert in a can."

Two weeks later, during their round of Superbowl parties in Detroit, Joey asks him who the lucky girl is.

"What?"

"You've got that ... look. You know. That you get. When you're smitten."

"I'm not smitten!"

"All right."

"I'm not!"

"OK. If you say so."

He thinks he might be, just a little bit. That's probably why he's blind-sided by Lance's new boyfriend. He wonders if it's karma, the universe's response to the band's new song that goes up on the website in March. If he's moving on, why wouldn't Lance?

"What do we know about this new guy?" he asks over lunch in Orlando, trying to sound casual. Justin's in town at some record company conference and JC's down for the day from Atlanta, where he's been laying down the latest in an interminable number of tracks for a second album Chris is beginning to think is mythical. They've already talked about JC's album and Justin's drop date and Joey's upcoming schedule, and Chris thinks it's just about time to bring up the topic he really wants to discuss.

"What new guy?" Justin asks.

"This new guy Lance is seeing," Chris says, looking around the table from Justin to Joey to ... JC, who's gazing back stonily, and Chris shuts his mouth with a snap.

"Lance's new ... friend?" JC says with a serenity in his voice that doesn't match his eyes.

"Yeah, C, Lance's new ... 'friend,' " Chris says, rolling his eyes. He actually makes the air quotes with his fingers, just in case, you know, the sarcasm wasn't plain enough.

Justin studies his silverware. Joey coughs into his napkin and elbows Chris. Their waiter hurries over in response to the sound.

"Oh, no, man. It's all right," JC tells the guy, gesturing around the table at their full glasses. "He wouldn't've been that discreet if he'd'a wanted something."

"Fuck off, C," Joey says with a grin after the waiter backs off.

"Oh, please, you'd have been all ... " JC waves his hands around, " 'Can we get some _ketchup_ over heeyah?' "

Joey flicks a piece of bread across the table and JC points at him with a mock warning look.

"Hey, man ..."

"Hey, man, can I try some of that ginger sauce?" Justin asks, poking his fork over onto JC's plate. "There's something in there, I can't figure out what, and I want to try something new at the restaurant back in L.A. ..."

Chris looks around at them in irritation, tapping the tines of his fork against his plate in a quick little rat-a-tat rhythm before he drops it, letting it clatter against the ceramic.

"_So_," he says, a little too loudly, modulating his voice once he has their attention. "Lance's new ... friend. Who is this guy, anyway?"

"I think he's Lance's realtor," Justin says, momentarily distracting Chris.

"Wait, Lance has a realtor? He's not selling his house, is he?" That's almost as bad as a new boyfriend. Chris has got a key to that house. He's got a room there that's practically his, after all the time he's spent in it.

"He was on that 'Amazing Race' show," Joey says to Justin.

"Oh, right. With his _boyfriend_. Didn't they break up? Maybe he's looking for a new _boyfriend_," Chris says, looking directly at JC, who gets up without a word, puts down his napkin and walks away from the table like some goddam diva, leaving Chris with his mouth hanging open. If that's the kind of thing Lance can expect from people who don't talk about it, no wonder he won't tell them in Mississippi, Chris thinks.

"Wow, thanks, man," Justin says as he gets up. "Now I have to go act all ... clueless and stuff to smooth this over."

"And we all know how much J loves looking like he's not on top of things," Joey says.

"This is ridiculous," Chris says as Justin walks away. "We all know, at this point."

"Dude, what do you think the last eight years have been like for everyone else?" Joey asks, staring at him.

"You people are _crazy_."

"You already knew that."

Chris throws his own napkin on the table and follows JC and Justin out onto the restaurant's patio.

"Go away, kid," he tells Justin, who looks nervously between them, gaze flickering from JC to Chris and back again. "Go on. I left Joey sitting in there by himself, he's probably getting into some kind of trouble."

"Go ahead," JC tells Justin, who finally turns around and walks back inside, which only increases the burn Chris already has going.

"What's wrong with you?" he asks the back of JC's head. "Do you know how bad this looks? I can't believe you'd do that to Lance."

"You're right, Chris, I wouldn't. But you're ... not ... Lance." JC's words are clipped as he turns to look at Chris, crossing his arms over his chest. "If Lance wants to tell me something about his life, then I'll be happy to listen. Whatever he wants to tell me. You know that."

Chris refuses to drop his eyes, but he concedes a nod.

"_Whenever_ he wants to tell me," JC says. "But until then ..."

"Until then?"

JC gestures expansively and makes an impatient noise.

"Until then, we already have so little privacy, Chris. People already speculate about his life on the Internet and gossip pages. I just ... I want to let him tell me things for himself, you know? I want to let him make those choices. I'm his friend. He deserves that much from me. All right?"

"OK."

Reichen is, of course, perfect, a big buff Ken doll - _no_, Chris thinks to himself, _G.I. Joe_ \- who seems to dote on Lance, although, between the amount of time Reichen spends grooming and the amount of time Lance spends grooming, Chris isn't sure how they have time to have a relationship. Standing next to him, Chris feels about three feet tall - literally - and finds himself acting out more than usual, trying to take up space.

Even Diane likes him, although there's a lingering wariness she hasn't displayed with any of Lance's past ... "friends," and Chris holds his breath as he observes the careful choreography of words that swirls around them all. He's not sure if it's his own new awareness or Reichen's out status that makes the whole conversational balance seem that much more delicate.

It's not the best time to deal with it, anyway, all of them brought together in Nashville for a memorial service, and Chris doesn't feel like he can breathe at all until he and JC head south together for Easter. JC tries, he really does, but Chris can see him slipping away ten minutes into the ride from Nashville to Orlando, as soon as Chris pulls the car onto I-24. He's never been able to stay awake in a moving vehicle, not unless he was the one driving, and none of them slept well for the past two nights, anyway.

Chris stops in Valdosta to gas up, and when he wanders back out after taking a piss and buying some corn chips, JC is out of the car and stretching, shirt pulled up to bare a pale slice of belly over low-hanging pants cinched on by a belt that's the only thing keeping the khakis from sliding right off his narrow hips.

"Here," Chris says, waving the bag of corn chips in JC's direction. "You need to eat something, man."

They switch places for the second leg, JC driving and singing softly to himself, snatches of old ballads interspersed with new songs that Chris doesn't recognize, but he falls asleep to the easy, familiar sound of the voice beside him. When he wakes in the twilight, the long stretch of I-75 still moving past his window, he turns his head and studies JC's profile in the soft grey light until JC looks over at him.

"Did you ever think," Chris says, choosing his words with uncharacteristic care, "that it might be hurting him, to carry stuff by himself?"

JC sighs and glances over at Chris before answering, not even pretending he doesn't know who Chris is talking about.

"Yeah, man. Of course I do. I ask myself all the time if I make the right decisions about ... a lot of stuff. All I can do is what I think is right. It's easier when I think ... I think he's probably not carrying stuff all by himself. Not now."

"So, you don't think I'm a bad friend when I ask him stuff. When I don't let him choose when to tell me."

"Somebody's got to do that, too, man. We all bring things to the mix, and we're all important. We all have our own abilities, our own place in the song. That's what makes us strong. You help one way. I help another. Joey does his thing, and Justin's got his own special groove."

"If it makes any difference, there's some stuff I never meant to ask," Chris says wryly.

JC laughs, and Chris studies him again for a minute.

"What should I have asked _you_, C?"

"You don't have to ask me nothing, man." JC looks over at Chris. "You know what there is to know, and I know you know. Besides, I'm not Lance. My path is different. I don't carry the same things he does. I mean, I carry some stuff, yeah. But not the same things. Not the same way."

Two weeks later, Chris gets a text message from JC: HE TOLD ME.

"Yeah, well, I'm glad he saved himself and got to wear white, or whatever, for their special day," Chris tells Joey over beers that night. "But I still think ... I don't know. It shouldn't be all _that_ special. It should just ... be."

A week after that, the world ends. That's what it feels like anyway, when Chris flips open his cellphone on Lance's caller ID, saying "Hello, hot stuff," and Lance draws in a deep shuddering breath before saying his name.

"What?" Chris says, putting down the guitar he's holding and getting up to close the studio door. "What is it?"

Lance is packed and on a plane to Mississippi within the hour, and it's only JC who manages to talk Chris out of following him there.

"He needs to do this, man," JC says over the phone. "And come on. You can't possibly think that anything you're going to do will make things go any smoother."

"I can't believe Diane asked Stacey," Chris says.

"Yeah."

"I can't believe Stacey told her."

"What was she going to say?"

" 'I don't know?' 'No comment?' "

"Because 'no comment' always deflects suspicion?"

"I guess it's a good thing _you_ waited. At least he got to make the choice to tell somebody."

"Mmm."

"Although I can't help feeling a little bit of sympathy. This is what happens when you ask questions and you're not prepared for the answer."

"Mmm."

"Jesus." Chris tucks the phone between his shoulder and his ear and picks at the frayed knee of his favorite jeans. He's widened the hole considerably in the past half-hour.

"Chris?"

"Yeah?"

"What's going on with you and Lance?"

"Excuse me?"

"You were going to get on a plane, cat. You were 10 minutes away from leaving for the airport, and the whole flying thing didn't even cross your mind."

"I don't suppose we can go back to not talking about any of this."

"Dude, do you have a thing for Lance?"

"What? _No_, I don't have a thing for Lance ..."

"You do. Wow."

"I do not."

"Oh, OK."

"I don't."

"Then why are you so weird about Reichen? He's a perfectly nice guy."

"He's a _guy_. I have sisters. I know better than to trust guys. I mean, I should know. I am one."

"OK. Sure."

"Aren't you supposed to let me _choose_ to tell you things like this?"

"It's cute, Chris. Really. Just ... why now?"

"Have you ever had Lance Bass flirt with you?"

Chris doesn't intend to do anything about it, because JC's right. Reichen's a perfectly nice guy, and Lance seems perfectly happy with him, and Reichen's even perfectly capable of sensing danger in the emotional waters and staying out of Chris's way when Lance tells them all that he's pretty sure he's going to come out. Like, to the world.

They're in Orlando for a charity auction, and JC's hugging Lance, and Reichen's grinning. Chris sets down his beer bottle with a thud on the table and looks up at the stage where Joey's running around and wonders if he knows about this.

"So, what do you think?" Lance says, and Chris looks from Lance to Reichen, at their identical smiles, and has to ask.

"I think I want to know if this is really what you want to do," he says, suddenly understanding how Diane feels when she worries about what the world might have in store for her baby boy, these days.

"What do you mean?" Lance says, smile not faltering - at least on his lips.

"I mean, is this something _you_ want to do? Or is it something other people want you to do?"

"Of course I want to do it, Chris, why wouldn't I?"

"Because you've spent a whole lot of time making yourself into things you think you should be, and where are you getting all these ideas of what you should be? From other people? What are you trying to prove?"

"Chris, I'd think you of all people, would want to be supportive of this," JC breaks in.

"Don't, JC," Chris says. "Some of us have been there while everyone else was keeping their heads in the sand, so don't tell me about being supportive."

"I don't ... Chris, you _have_ always been supportive in the past ..." Lance says, voice hesitant and unhappy, and Chris' heart clenches at the sound.

"I know I have, baby," he says, putting his hand on Lance's shoulder, stroking Lance's cheek with his thumb. "But I have to ask. Because there was nothing wrong with that kid, Lance, that boy on the cover of our first album. He was fine. Just as fine as the guy on the cover of _Celebrity_. And that guy on the cover of _Celebrity_ had some of the same problems as that kid. So I want to know if this is something you want to do, or if you're making yourself into something that somebody else thinks you should be."

"Stop it," Lance says, knocking Chris's hand away. "Of course it's something I want to do. I'm tired of lying all the time, tired of hiding who I really am."

"Who are you, really?" he asks, and the question's rhetorical until it's out of his mouth.

"I don't ..."

"I mean, I miss your nose, you know?" Chris says. Lance turns three shades of pale as he stares at Chris with his mouth open before he turns on his heel and walks away.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" JC hisses, more pissed off than Chris has seen him since they went ten rounds with Jive over which tracks were going on _Celebrity_.

It's a long night after that, and Lance never answers his cellphone. Eventually, Chris ends up on Joey's doorstep.

"Make Lance call me back," he whines in as irritating a tone as he can manage, while Joey leans in the doorway.

"Forget it, man. If you're gonna be whipped, it's up to you not to piss him off, you sad sonuvabitch. I don't get in the middle of people's drama."

Joey does take him in and feed him, scrambled eggs with cheese and tomatoes, hot chile peppers mixed in liberally, and about a pound of bacon. Chris sucks down three cups of coffee before Joey cuts off his caffeine, and Kelly raises an eyebrow at him when she makes an appearance, dressed in the sweats she wears when she's in the middle of sorting through closets or the attic or some other space where Joey collects stuff.

"No bed last night?" she asks him.

"Begone, woman," Chris says, waving a tired hand at her, and she smacks him in the back of the head on her way to the coffee carafe.

"Is Uncle Chris in trouble again?" Briahna asks, looking up from her Honey-Nut Cheerios with interest.

"Uncle Chris made a ... fool of himself to Uncle Lance and can't think of a good way to apologize," Joey says.

"Daddy buys Mama jewelry when he does something dumb," Briahna tells Chris, and Chris points a finger at her and then waggles it at the doorway.

"You, you're old enough, too. What is it with you women?"

She just giggles at him.

Two days later, on the third round of phone calls - Chris hates Caller ID, it gives him away every time - Justin finally picks up the phone.

"I can't talk to you, man," he says in greeting. "I heard what you did."

"Oh, don't start with me. Like you like the new nose."

"That's not the _point_," Justin says, and Chris sniggers. "Oh my God, you're 5. Can you be serious for one minute? Just one."

"I _know_, all right? I know. Now if you'd just make Lance pick up the phone, I'd apologize."

"I'm supposed to make Lance Bass do something he doesn't want to do? Have you _met_ Lance?"

"You're in L.A. right now, right? And you're bigger than him. So go over to his house and knock him down. I'll call, and when the phone rings, you hold it against his ear ..."

"Forget it, dude."

"What? It's not like you've never pinned Lance before."

"I may be bigger than Lance, but Reichen is bigger than me. Plus, he was in the Air Force. No way, man."

"Dude, the Air Force is the pansy branch of the military. Ask any Army guy."

" ... Was that some kind of joke? Because it was kind of mean."

"What? No! I wasn't talking about the gay thing!"

"Well, good. Because I don't think you should make jokes like that. It's not supportive."

"You're kidding me with this, right? You're the one who's not even supposed to _know_, yet."

"I think I'm going to hang up on you now."

"Don't do that ... Hey, J. J! I'm sorry, all right. I'm just a little bit nuts right now."

"No kidding."

"It's just, if he's going to be gay, he should be gay with _me_."

"Chris, you're not gay."

"What about that thing that time?"

"Oh, that's right, that one thing, that one time. You're so incredibly gay."

"I don't think you should say things like that. It's not very supportive to question the level of my gayness as if it's not valid unless it meets your benchmarks, or something. Anyway, there was that one thing that you know about. How do you know there haven't been a whole lot of .... things?" Chris waves a hand around. "It's not like any of us talk about this stuff."

"Oh, I know you're not blaming _me_ for not talking. I haven't even been told yet. Apparently."

"And Lance wasn't gay either, until recently."

"Chris. He's always been gay."

"Yeah. I know. I just didn't know it. Because I'm dumb. And none of you said anything, so I missed my chance ... Wait a minute. How the hell do you know what happened if we're still not supposed to be talking about any of this?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Cute."

"No. Really. I'm lost. What are we even talking about, at this point?"

Chris is pretty sure JC only picks up the phone because he's in the middle of fiddling with some music and doesn't realize what he's doing until it's too late.

"Dude, you gotta help me out here," Chris says.

JC hmmms absently and Chris pulls the cellphone away from his ear and shakes it, as if the motion will actually joggle him and get his attention.

"C. If you'd like to call me back at a later date, we can make an appointment, OK? Just tell me you're going to talk to me."

"Sorry! I'm sorry ... I was just, making an adjustment on the board ..."

"Dude, seriously, if you're going to be all ... Studio Guy, or whatever," Chris waves his hands in the air, "then I can talk to you later."

"No, it's OK. I'm done now."

"And you're still speaking to me?"

"I don't know why. What the hell was that even about, Chris?"

"C'mon, C. Don't tell me you don't want to know whose idea that was."

"Did you ever think it might be Lance's?"

"Then fine, OK. I just ... I want to be sure he's ready for what's coming."

"They dropped him in the forest with like, some string and bubblegum, and he survived for three days. Lance can be pretty sure about what he wants."

"You didn't see him, man. You didn't see him ... shaking before he told his family. I thought he was going to throw up at the idea. And those are people who love him."

"Maybe those are the ones who really matter, Chris."

"That was ... a pointed comment, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"You gotta remember, I'm not so good with the subtlety," Chris says.

"Really?"

There's a meet-and-greet in Miami Beach the night between a charity golf tournament and a charity poker tournament, and Joey elbows his way through the D-list crowd in the hotel bar to give Chris a hand-printed name tag that says "The Future Mrs. Lance Bass" on it.

"Oh, fuck you, you fuck," Chris says. "And fuck Justin, too." Joey laughs at him and leans down so Chris can hear him in the throng.

"You're a 12-year-old girl, man. You're like that skit on Saturday Night Live, with that junior-high girl who calls herself the Future Mrs. Justin Timberlake ..."

"I get it, Joe. Geez. You'd think a guy who's made it into the Dr. Phillips High School Hall of Fame would have figured out that explaining the joke only kills it."

"Hey, I think I still have some of that Lance-flavored lip balm around, somewhere," Joeys says, giggling in Chris's ear, and Chris puts a shoulder in the middle of his chest and shoves at him. "I'll trade you for a Justin Timberlake trading card."

"Who's the 12-year-old girl, here? I don't think I'm the girl, here, Joe. I think maybe if there's a big girl here, it's you."

"Yeah, well, I was only ever his _celibate_ boyfriend," Joey says, smirking.

"Platonic."

"Whatever."

"I'm not sure there's anything celibate about you, Joe," Chris says, and Joey wiggles his eyebrows suggestively before motioning to the bartender for their first round.

Of course, that's part of the problem, isn't it? Joey really was Lance's platonic boyfriend, in more ways than one. Chris isn't sure he's anyone's ideal boyfriend material.

"You should call him," Joey says, as they huddle together at a corner of the bar. "You haven't been out to L.A. in a while."

"Yeah, well, Justin hardly ever has any time, and JC's always recording."

"And then there's Lance."

"Eh. Lance is busy with his boyfriend. Weren't they going to Cabo this weekend? Plus, he's spending his time looking for a new house," Chris says. _And my room is gonna be gone_, he thinks but doesn't say out loud because God, how 12 can he really be and maintain any shred of dignity? He's sure there will be plenty of guest rooms in the new house, whatever it ends up being, but none of them will be _his_, not the way the old room was his.

"You're just pissed off because you think he's giving up on you."

"What?"

"He says he's stayed in the closet to protect the group; he comes out; you think he figures there's no group to protect any more. And you think NSYNC is what's holding all of us together." Joey illustrates this emotional autopsy with expansive hand gestures before looking expectantly at Chris.

"_What_?"

"I dunno." Joey shrugs and drains his beer. "It's what Kelly says, anyway."

"That ... makes me sound like kind of an asshole, man. And sort of pathetic. I'm not sure I like your wife, anymore."

"It's OK, Chris." Joey pats him on the head before motioning for another round. "We've all always known you could be an ass. It's part of your charm. You just have to remember to listen to us when we tell you what not to say out loud and who not to say it to."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"That means you don't have to _like_ the other girl who stole the guy you want as your boyfriend. You just have to be _polite_ about it."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Chris says and slurps at his new Red Bull and vodka. "I'm not polite to anybody. If I'm polite to you, that's how you know I don't like you."

He wears the name tag for the rest of the night. If anyone can get away with that sort of thing, he figures it's probably him. Before he falls into bed, he sends a picture of himself wearing it to Lance. He can't think of what to say in the email, so he just attaches the photo and hits "send."

Three days later, the new issue of People magazine hits the Internet, and Chris wakes up to reporters on his lawn, just like old times.

When he calls Lance, he's not surprised the phone clicks directly over to voicemail - becoming the gay coverboy of People magazine will make you understandably busy and in-demand - he's only surprised there's room left to leave a message at all, so he fumbles around and finally says congratulations and I'll talk you, sometime. He calls back two minutes later and says, quickly, "I knew you could do it, baby. I knew you'd be all right," before hanging up again.

Lance calls back the next day while Chris is at the doctor's office, pantsless, with his phone on manner mode in the pocket of his cargos, which are folded in a chair on the other side of the examination room. The message is short and gruff in that way Chris has learned means Lance is biting back tears: "Thank you." There's another message, just as short, two minutes later: "For everything." Chris restrains himself from calling and demanding to know who made Lance cry so that he can beat them up. Unfortunately, it's not his place to beat up people for Lance anymore. Also, he's afraid it might have been him.

Chris does call back while Lance is in New York and leaves a message saying that he probably won't be so much of a cranky ass once he gets through the surgery his doctor says he has to have on his ACL, and maybe once he doesn't hurt so much he won't be such a bastard to live with. And that he wants to make sure Lance is OK. And, um, bye.

Lance sends a get-well e-card with a message saying he hopes the surgery went well and that he's still out of town, but that he'll call when he can. It sounds kind of overly polite to Chris, but then, Lance can be like that, he supposes.

Chris sends Lance an e-mail congratulating him on the HRC recognition.

He gets a birthday card.

He calls Lance's cellphone in the middle of the night, a couple of weeks later, and leaves a long rambling message about how quiet the house is and how he sometimes remembers the sound of Lance breathing across the room late at night in that first Orlando house and how it would put him to sleep just as quickly as the television. He calls the house in L.A. the next day when he knows no one will be home and leaves an embarrassed apology for drunk dialing.

He comes home from the studio one day at 4:45 a.m. to a message in a threadbare voice detailing a run-in with a couple of guys in an airport that leaves him feeling murderous, even if the whole thing never went past verbal slings and arrows, and he has to turn around and go back to the studio to take it out on the guitar before he's fit to speak to anyone.

He thinks about Briahna's advice, thinks about Lance, and sends some vintage Dr. Seuss books for Christmas.

The New Year brings another new song - because emotional turmoil never seems to stop being good for creativity - a teddy bear in a miniature "Big Daddy Rock Star" t-shirt and a call from Justin.

"OK, you're coming out here as soon as our schedules line up, man. Because this thing you and Lance are doing, it's just getting weird."

"What is this 'thing' of which you speak?"

"This weird mating dance. Just ask him out already, before you both start sending creepy tokens of affection and not just cheesy ones."

"Lance has a boyfriend who's perfectly capable of taking him ... out." His own wording suddenly strikes Chris as funny and he has to sit down, he's laughing so hard.

"Oh, ha ha."

"You know, I can't believe you, of all people, are encouraging me to mack on someone else's boyfriend, Mr. Cry Me A River."

"Would I do that to you, man?"

"It's what you're doing right _now_."

"Chris? You're not keeping up, here, are you?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Lance doesn't have a boyfriend. Well, not right now."

"What happened to Ken?"

"They're off again, I guess."

"Off again?"

"Like they've been three times in the past month and a half?"

"I ... What?"

"Dude, listen to me. Lance is a ... vai ... la ... ble." Justin drags out the word for the slow children, one of whom is clearly Chris. "You're always complaining that no one told you anything and you missed your chance. Well, here it is. Go get it. Him. Whatever. Just please, I'm beggin' you, do something. I'm tired of getting calls from Joey complaining about Lance moping around."

"But if they're off again, doesn't that imply there's an on again?"

"They've done that. Three times. Lance is a celebrity with lots of cash and a hot body who's suddenly out in Hollywood. Do you really think he's going to settle down with the first guy he's on the cover of magazines with?" Justin says, and Chris bangs the cellphone on the edge of the dining room table, three good whacks.

"What the fuck, man?" Justin's saying when he puts it back to his ear.

"Oh, damn. The phone's still working. Because I really want to hear about the pool of hardbody twinks in Hollywood looking for a sugar-daddy that Lance can dive into now. Thank you, Justin. I feel a lot better. You can't measure what you've done for my peace of mind."

"Dude ..."

"No, really, J. You _can't_ measure it. You know why? Because there's nothing to measure."

"I sort of got that."

"And yes, Justin."

"Yes, what?"

"Yes, I think he is going to settle down with the first guy he was on magazine covers with. One of us at least. And I don't mean you."

"Aw. You're cute. I'd think you'd have a better chance if he was speaking to you, though."

"Hey, maybe he's not speaking to me, but he hasn't even officially _told_ you, yet, so I think I'm ahead in the Lance Bass sweepstakes."

"And how is that?"

"Clearly it's a sign of his great trust in me."

"OKaaay?"

"I mean, even though we're on the outs, he knows I'm not going to talk smack about him in this high-profile and delicate time."

"Just about his hair and his fashion sense and oh, yeah. His nose."

"Dude. Is it necessary to bring that up? I'm trying to put that behind us."

"So, if not talking to you is a sign of this great and beautiful trust, or whatever, what is it a sign of, that he hasn't even told me yet?"

"That's a sign you shouldn't have outed him in a national gay magazine. Trust me on this one, J. No one can hold a grudge like Bass."

Everywhere else in the country, it's probably still winter, but there's a hint of warmth in the air when Chris calls from an Exxon station on the outskirts of Mobile to say he's on the way to L.A. Lance is supposed to be in New York with some of his girl posse, but Chris leaves the message at the Hollywood house, anyway. He's not interested in aligning schedules and scheduling meets. Sooner or later, Lance will come home, and when he gets there, Chris will be waiting.

He makes it to Beaumont before calling it a night, but his ass is hamburger from the Harley's seat and he considers staying an extra day just to give his body time to recover before the next leg of the ride. Maybe he's getting too old for this; Las Cruces is a long ride away. He lies in the dark of his hotel room, wrapped in a blanket, listening to the sound of his own breathing and thinking he should have kept the RV, even it it was a little bit pathetic, the way he'd roll over to face the wall in the narrow bunk, pretending he was back on the bus so he could sleep.

He beats Lance back to L.A., but he's had the security code to the new house for a while now - like Dr. Seuss's birth date was going to be hard to guess, for anyone who knew Lance. Chris is surprised fans haven't carted away all of Lance's stuff for souvenirs yet. There's no red light blinking on the phone, so Lance must have checked his voicemail. Chris hasn't heard from him on the cellphone, and he's not sure if that's good or bad. He looks at the shower attached to the guest room that's been designated his - the room still unlived in enough to feel like a guest room - and makes a face at the gleaming fixtures, deciding what he really needs is a soak in the spa in the master suite, with its massage jets.

Finally clean and only slightly achy, he steals one of Lance's T-shirts to wear with his sole pair of non-filthy jeans and wanders out to the den, toweling his hair dry. _How the Grinch Stole Christmas_ is still lying around, but Chris isn't up for either a size-queen heartwarming tale or the intensity of the Who Game, so he settles for digging up Lance's copy of _On The Line_, raiding the beer supply in the kitchen and drinking every time Lance looks vaguely uncomfortable when required to be romantic with Emanuelle. Lance spends a lot of the movie looking for her, rather than actually being around her, so Chris is only slightly buzzed when Lance walks in and sets his luggage down in the doorway of the den, and he waves lazily from his slumped position on the couch.

"Hi, Lance."

"Hi, Chris." Lance sounds vaguely amused - of course, he often sounds vaguely amused, because that's one of the three Default Lance Settings these days - but at least he doesn't sound vaguely pissed off.

"I came by to apologize."

"You came by - from Orlando - to apologize," Lance says, crossing his arms and becoming vaguely porny, leaning against the doorjamb like some kind of coverboy pinup as his T-shirt stretches tight across his chest.

_How long did you have to practice that move?_ Chris wants to ask, but that won't get them to the places he wants this conversation to go - and it's a rhetorical question anyway, because it's not like Chris doesn't know exactly how much practice the right kind of pose takes, he just hasn't cared enough to do it for years - so he settles for the topic already at hand.

"Yes," he says, nodding firmly and pointing at Lance with the hand that's still holding a bottle of crazyass-expensive imported beer. "To apologize."

"What are you apologizin' for, exactly?"

"For outing you on TRL."

"For outing me on TRL."

"You know, this conversation would go a lot faster if you didn't just repeat everything I said," Chris explains patiently.

"Chris, have you been drunk since Orlando? You never outed me on TRL." Lance moves into the room, which means the loss of the stretched-tight T-shirt as he drops his arms. On the upside, it also means he puts Chris's head in his lap after poking him to shift and sitting on the couch.

"Well, not on purpose. And only because nobody ever _said_ you were gay. I wouldn't have done it if I'd known." Chris closes his eyes as Lance's nimble fingers comb his hair back from his face.

"What are you talkin' about?"

"That time on the Pop Odyssey junket. When we did the satellite feed. And Heath Ledger was on the show? You know, and I kept holding up that "I love Heath" sign over your head and pointing at you? Oh my God." Chris sits up suddenly, clunking the beer bottle down on the coffee table. "Everyone thought I was a huge asshole, didn't they? 'Cause everybody knew, they just weren't talking about it, and I was _outing_ you on TRL."

"Chris, come here." Lance pulls him back down by the shoulder and pets him some more, burying his fingers in Chris's curls and rubbing gently against his scalp. "Nobody thought you were outing me on TRL. Everybody thought you were doin' some kind of double-bluff. I mean, who's going to think you'd do that if I was really gay, you know?"

"Right," Chris says. "That's right. It was a ... uh ... clever and intricate coverup to help you out. It wasn't me being clueless. At all."

"That's right."

"Because I wouldn't be clueless like that."

"No. Never."

"Lance?" Chris opens his eyes. "Where's your boyfriend?"

"We're kind of off-again," Lance says.

"Oh. How kind of?"

"Pretty much."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Do I need to beat him up for you?"

"I don't think that will be necessary." Lance sounds vaguely amused again.

They sit in silence for a minute, and Chris stares unseeing at the joyous reunion of Lance and Emanuelle on the television screen. He supposes he should drink, but he'd have to sit up, and Lance's hands feel too good.

"You killed my group, man," he says finally, testing out the idea on his tongue.

"I'm not sure I actually killed it."

"Lance Bass, boyband killer."

"I don't really think I killed it."

"Well, you're the one who sent out the death notice. That should earn you some indie emo cred, at least."

"Chris, are you ... OK?"

Chris reaches up, above his head, to where Lance is leaning over him and touches Lance's nose, but Lance flinches away, yanking at Chris's hair in the process.

"Hey," Chris says, grabbing one of Lance's hands before he can pull back any further. "Hey."

"Don't."

"Don't ... what?"

"I don't want to do that again, Chris. We've been there already, and I don't ..."

"Hey. Shut up a minute, OK? Just ... chill out." He pulls Lance's hand down so it rests on his chest, pressing the palm over his heart and threading his own fingers through Lance's, watching their linked hands rise and fall as he breathes.

He presses the fingers of his left hand to his lips and reaches up to touch Lance's nose again.

"Chris ..." Lance brings his free hand to Chris's face, thumb brushing over his cheek, fingers touching Chris' mouth, and Chris takes the chance to grab him by the wrist and press light kisses to his fingertips. He can hear Lance's breath hitch and the hand on his chest fists in his T-shirt. "Chris ... don't tease."

There's a twinge in his lower back as he twists up to sit looking at Lance without letting go of his hands, but he ignores it.

"Baby, I'm finally _not_ teasing," he says, and leans in.

Their noses bump and then their teeth click but then Chris tilts his head and slides his tongue across Lance's lower lip and nothing else matters until Lance breaks away. Chris holds on again, pressing their foreheads together, feeling Lance's hot breath against his mouth.

"Chris," Lance says, not opening his eyes. "You don't have to do this. I'm not goin' anywhere. And I know you're not gay."

"What is it with everyone thinking I'm all inexperienced with the manlove?" Chris asks in exasperation. "I had that thing, that time, you know?"

"What ... thing?" Lance blinks at him.

"Jesus. You weren't talking to anybody about anything, were you? Just ... You're not going to be plundering my virgin flesh, or anything."

"I didn't know I was going to be plundering anything," Lance says, ducking his head in that oddly shy way he's kept through the years.

"And _that_, Bass, is why I do all the planning around here."

"Man with the plan," Lance says, grinning.

"That's right."


End file.
